Effect of neutron irradiation on mechanical properties of ferritic steels

Effect of neutron radiation exposure was investigated in Various ferritic steels with the main emphasis being the effects of thermal neutrons on radiation hardening. Pure iron of varied grain sizes was also used for characterizing the grain size effects on the source hardening before and after neutron irradiation. While many steels are considered in the overall study, the results on 1020, A516 and A588 steels are emphasized. Radiation hardening due to fast neutrons was seen to be sensitive to the composition of the steels with A354 being the least resistant and A490 the least sensitive. Majority of the radiation hardening stems from friction hardening, and source hardening term decreased with exposure to neutron radiation apparently due to the interaction of the interstitial impurities with radiation produced defects. Inclusion of thermal neutrons along with fast resulted in further decrease in the source hardening with a slight increase in the friction hardening which revealed a critical grain size below which exposure to total (fast and thermal) neutron spectrum resulted in a slight reduction in the yield stress compared to the exposure to only fast neutrons. This is the first time such a grain size effect is reported and this is shown to be consistent with known radiation effects on friction and source hardening terms along with the observation that low energy neutrons have a nonnegligible effect on the mechanical properties of steels. In ferritic steels, however, despite their small grain size, exposure to total neutron spectrum yielded higher strengths than exposure to only fast neutrons. This behavior is consistent with the fact that the source hardening is small in these alloys and radiation effect is due only to friction stress.